All posts tagged cybercrime

After China, the world's biggest source of global data theft comes from inside the European Union, said a report published Tuesday.

Verizon Communications Inc.'s Data Breach Report 2013 found that more than a quarter of the world's data thieves operated in Romania.

Some 28% of the hackers behind 47,000 data breaches investigated by Verizon were working from Romania. That was second only to China with 30%. By contrast only 18% of data thieves were acting out of the U.S. said the company.

A group of criminals, who reportedly used viruses to paralyze computers across 30 countries over the last two years, extorting millions of euros in the process, has been arrested. Pretending to be from European Union police agency Europol or other law enforcement authorities, they sent messages to the hijacked computers’ owners demanding cash be paid for “fines” to allow the machines to be reactivated.

“Drive-by” exploits are now the biggest online threat according to the European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA). This method of attack involves the injection of malicious code into websites so they can exploit vulnerabilities in browsers and whereby a user can be infected simply by visiting a site.

Two reports show Russia as the go-to country for all sorts of digital malware and services. Moscow-based security company Kaspersky Labs says its home nation has now passed the U.S.A. as the country which hosts the most malware. At the same time, another large security company, Trend Micro, has published a research paper on Russia’s cheap and thriving underground digital economy.

Emerging nations need to tackle cybersecurity if they wish to compete in the global market, according to the head of the International Cyber Security Protection Alliance.

CEO John Lyons said emerging nations that lacked the legal structures to deal with cybercrime and the resilience to protect their critical national infrastructure risked being isolated. He also suggested that divisions in the international community about Internet policy were being played out across emerging nations, using aid as way of winning influence.

Without cyber-protection measures, said Mr. Lyons, international companies would be reluctant to invest. “If you look at large enterprises, are they really going to invest many millions in countries if they wake up and find their data has been stolen?”

It would be better to spend more money catching cybercriminals rather than trying to persuade the public to invest in online protection according to a report by Cambridge University for the U.K.’s Ministry of Defense.

‘Some police forces believe the problem is too large to tackle,’ said the study’s lead author Prof Ross Anderson in a statement. ‘In fact, a small number of gangs lie behind many incidents and locking them up would be far more effective than telling the public to fit an anti-phishing toolbar or purchase antivirus software.’

Innovation, it would seem, is not limited to legitimate online retailers. Criminals have been looking to sell stolen data quickly and efficiently using Automated Vending Carts, but a two-year police operation may have slowed some of them down.

Three men have been arrested and 36 websites closed as part of an action involving the U.K. Serious Organized Crime Agency, the FBI, the U.S. Department of Justice and authorities from the Netherlands, Germany, Romania, Ukraine and Australia. The sites were involved in the sale of credit card information and and personal data.

Cyber crime has become the second-largest source of criminal activity against the financial sector, according to a survey published Tuesday.

The growth of cyber crime is the more worrying given that in 2009, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Fighting Economic Crime in the Financial Services Sector report, it accounted for no reported economic crime at all.

Cyber crime now accounts for 38% of economic-crime incidents, compared with 16% for other industries in the survey, which in total analyzed 3,877 responses spanning 78 countries, with 23% of those (878 respondents) coming from the financial-services sector.

The report is highly critical of the financial-services industry and its ability to tackle the threat and deal with the consequences. “It appears that some [financial-sector] organizations are complacent about the risks that cyber crime poses, in spite of serious concerns about potential damage arising from cyber threats,” it says.

In 2011, attacks by so-called hacktivists accounted for more data theft than those motivated by espionage or finance, according to a new comprehensive global report.

Verizon’s 2012 Data Breach Investigations Report (PDF), which was produced in conjunction with the U.S. Secret Service and law enforcement agencies in Ireland, the Netherlands, the U.K. and Australia, found that 58% of data stolen world-wide was the result of hacktivist activity even though they were responsible for only 3% of the incidents. Cyber criminals continue to be the biggest threat with 83% of data breaches.

Hacktivists are computer criminals who target companies typically for political reasons, while cybercriminals tend to be financially motivated. “Most data thieves are professional criminals deliberately trying to steal information they can turn into cash,” according to the report.

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